Japanese dolls and Japanese children...
There was of course a great interest in showing children where the Japanese dolls came from! This page shows the range of images that could be conjured by artists to this end. Sometimes we see "Japanese" children who look Western (or doll-like); there are pictures that show study of Japanese art, and fantasy settings that seem to have been created by visiting an importer's store and filling the canvas with as many exotic items as possible; and there are relatively realistic depictions of Japanese manners. Some of the images relate to the Doll Festival, which must have particularly intrigued illustrators even when they had no good models for the dolls or display. See also the Paper Dolls page.
Click small image for full  item.

Lovely illustrated page from St. Nicholas magazine, 1886,  with poem about how Japanese babies are reputed not to cry, but probably do. That Japanese babies never or rarely cry is a commonplace of books about Japan in the 1880-1930 period. 

No dolls here but a great picture of Japanse babies!

 1916, US

Japanese scene of girl tickling a sleepy boy holding an inauthentic-looking doll (with shoes). This card was given by a teacher to a child as a "reward of merit."

Illustration, magazine, ca. 1896, US

Latham?

Title "The Festival of Dolls--the Favorite." Magazine page (without date or title) with "Japanese" girl choosing among 4 ichimatsu. There is no evidence of authentic festival dolls. On the back  is a short, fairly accurate article on the Festival of Dolls and a note on the Japanese language.  Note, added 1/24/6: the same illustration, but poorer quality, appears in another context (a Japanese girl speaks of her doll) in a copy of Eugene Field's Pittypat and Tippytoes (1896).

The German company Liebig published many series of trade cards on educational subjects. These two images (the top one from 1897) are representations of the Doll Festival (Puppenfest in German) from two series: "In Japan" and "Japanese Folk Festivals." The dolls themselves in both pictures are inauthentic, that is, they don't look like the hina dolls displayed in Japan at the Doll Festival.

In the upper image, the title explains that this is the Peach Festival, and tells us that friends of the family bring flowers. It is clear that the little girl is the proprietor of the display and also that food and drink for the dolls have been set out, on a table that indeed resembles those in a hina display. 

In the lower image, we seem to have a large group of little girls admiring the display, each having brought along a large baby doll of her own. In fact, it's not easy to decide whether some of the babies are children or dolls. Compare with E. S. Hardy's illustration below, which is more accurate but has the same idea.

This is another card from the Japanese Folk-Festival series, depicting the Festival of Flags or Boys' Day. The display of carp banners is shown, and the boys with sticks and headbands presumably to use in a war game, but the centerpiece is a mounted samurai doll (looking more like a European knight than like a samurai....).

book, 190-?, by Mary Hazleton Wade, illus. Josephine Bruce

"Kono and her Japanese Doll, Plum Bloom." This is the first story in the book, and is a fairly substantial tour of the festivals of the Japanese year, as seen by the doll of a well-to-do little girl. The author had written a book about Japanese children's games, so she knew something about dolls and the doll festival, and the illustration suggests Japanese child life. Interestingly, Kono comes with a set of interchangeable wigs.

book, 1901, US, by Grace Duffie Boylan and Ike Morgan

Books which give children tours of the world, emphasizing daily life or "race types" in various countries, were common throughout the late 19th and early 20th century. This book is a very lively one, with vigorous, often humorously racist, color drawings and fanciful verses. The Japanese section includes three poems, one on "What you would do in Japan" (ride in a jinrikisha), one about kite-flying and the disaster that befalls the aggressive kite of a certain "Jap man." The third one is entitled "The Feast of Dolls" but it is about a seller of cookies in alphabet shapes. The illustration shows two dolls which do not however look like actual Japanese dolls. Evidently neither the author nor the illustrator knew anything about the feast.

postcard, 1904, UK, pub. Raphael Tuck 

Mailed as birthday card to Stoke on Trent in 1904. 
Boy and girl with wavy European hair in vaguely Japanese dress sitting on a bamboo bench with pagodas in the background, both holding onto a doll. 

Tiny print gives title "Japland." There were other cards in the series; evidently the boy is pulling on the doll and its head comes off, and in the next scene  the little girl is comforted by a different boy. 

postcard (pair), 1918, UK

Davis & co. "Wee Japan" series

Both posted to same person from Folkestone. Boy has spoon and bowl and a girl doll: "Afternoon tea." "Little Geisha Girl" has parasol. Clothing has strong Chinese flavor, but children do wear Japanese footwear. Each has a little mock red stamp.

Chloe Preston (1887-1969), probably ca. 1915

Chloe Preston was the illustrator of the Peek-a-Boos series (ca. 1910-20) which includes the title The Peek-A-Boo Japs. New link for 2004! This illustration, with a little girl admiring her doll,  may have been for a book but it was reproduced in postcard form with 2 different captions and verses. This one is about a doll with the fake-Chinese name "Peenee Weenee Ho", while the other one, more authentic, was issued in a Tuck postcard series "Quaint Little Folk":
 

Bess Devine Jewell, 1922

The book Pansy Eyes: A Maid of Japan includes a scene rather like that in "the Favorite" above, of a little girl playing with ichimatsu and geisha dolls, not hina dolls.

1920?, UK E. S. Hardy (Shaw pub.)

A Japanese Greeting
Japanese mothers bow greeting while little girl with doll stands by (picking nose?). One of a series of six cards showing children in Japan.

Girls' Festival
Japanese mothers give daughters ichimatsu with hina set (including palace) in background.

Hardy seems to have been active as an illustrator in 1895 but the style and quality of these images suggests a later date.

magazine article, Frederick Starr, Child Life May 1927

This is an informative article with several nice illustrations (click the image here to see a different image). The illustrator certainly uses real Japanese dolls as models, though the doll shown in one picture is a "hime daruma" (princess daruma), not a Boys' Day doll.